In one form of a prior process for making a loom harness, the harness is produced by assembling together a large number of separate individual portions or components. For example, a Jacquard type weaving machine can have a large number of carabiner hooks, each acting as a lifting mechanism for a loom harness connected thereto. Commonly, Jacquard machines may have 600 to 8000 lift hooks which are computer controlled to move up and down at the proper time to effect the weaving operation on the loom below. Starting, for example, from a Jacquard machine, the harness forming process begins by connecting a plurality of flexible harness cords to a carabiner hook, snap hook or the like on the Jacquard machine and then drawing the flexible cords downwardly through a single aperture provided in an upper aperture board of a loom harness assembly. Each harness cord is separated from the others and passed further downwardly through a selected opening provided in a comber board having a plurality of spaced apart openings therein. The individual harness cords are thus maintained at spaced intervals apart from one another and hang downwardly from the comber board. A typical harness board may have several thousand openings therein.
Thereafter, the harness making process involves assembling a separate subassembly to each dangling harness cord, each subassembly including a lower frame hook for connection to a fixed frame of the loom, a counterpull element or spring connected thereto and a heald connected between the spring and an individual harness cord hanging down from the comber board.
The operation of connecting thousands of harness cords hanging downwardly from a comber board to a corresponding number of healds which are pulled upwardly from a fixed counterpull frame below is especially difficult, because it is important for a mail or eye of each heald to be brought precisely to a defined height or level relative to the frame or the comber board before the final connection between the heald and the harness cord is secured. The operation of bringing the mails or eyes to a specific height is often referred to as equalization; and in the past, leveling all of the mails or eyes in a loom harness assembly at a selected level was done mainly by eyeballing alone. The terms mails and eyes will be used generally interchangeably in this specification.
To make a loom harness, a separate upper harness element and a separate lower harness element are each partially prefabricated. Then, as described above, the separate harness elements are worked together towards each other for interconnection at a junction region defined between a respective harness cord and a heald. However, this operating procedure suffers from the principal disadvantage in that the point of connection between a respective individual harness cord and a respective heald must be made simultaneously with an equalization operation, which is often difficult to achieve in an effective manner that assures that the mails or eyes are at a precise height.